She had always owned a good houseful of furniture; but, after making bitter meals upon the gradual wreck of it, she had been compelled to break up that house, and retire with her five children to lodge with a lone widow in this little cot, not over three yards square, in "Seed's Yard," one of those dark corners into which decent poverty is so often found now, creeping unwillingly away from the public eye, in the hope of weathering the storm of adversity, in penurious independence.

The old woman never would accept relief from the parish, although the whole family had been out of work for many months.

One of the daughters, a clean, intelligent-looking young woman, about eighteen, sat at the table, eating a little bread and treacle to a cup of light-coloured tea, when we went in; but she blushed, and left off until we had gone--which was not long after.

It felt almost like sacrilege to peer thus into the privacies of such people; but I hope they did not feel as if it had been done offensively.

We called next at the cottage of a hand-loom weaver--a poor trade now in the best of times--a very poor trade--since the days when tattered old "Jem Ceawp" sung his pathetic song of "Jone o' Greenfeelt"-- "Aw'm a poor cotton weighver, as ony one knows; We'n no meight i'th heawse, an' we'n worn eawt er clothes; We'n live't upo nettles, while nettles were good; An' Wayterloo porritch is th' most of er food; This clemmin' and starvin', Wi' never a farthin'-- It's enough to drive ony mon mad." This family was four in number--man, wife, and two children.